Atascadero race car driver wins national championship

Atascadero resident Charlie Buzzetti won the 944 Spec class championship last weekend at the 2018 National Auto Sport Association National Championships in Texas.
Nikolaus Schleitwiler

Atascadero resident Charlie Buzzetti has brought a national championship title back to the Central Coast.

Buzzetti won the 944 Spec class championship last week at the 2018 National Auto Sport Association National Championships in Texas.

More than 450 amateur and professional drivers from across the country converged on Circuit of The Americas to compete in more than 20 classes — the largest field of competitors since NASA was formed in 1991.

“It’s my first time here. The track is pretty tough. It takes a bit of time to get comfortable with it,” Buzzetti said in a news release. “There are high-speed corners, slow-speed corners, really demanding esses that have a decreasing speed as you get deeper and deeper into them. It’s really difficult to have the car under control in that area, because you want to be as fast as you can, but too fast and you’re going for a big ride.”

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Racers drove the same 3.4-mile road course that Formula 1 drivers will run in late October on the North American leg of their tour, the release said.

NASA is one of the largest grassroots motor sports groups in the country, with numerous drivers moving into the professional ranks, according to the release.

Father-and-son duo Doug and Brad DeBerti of Arroyo Grande talk about racing and building custom cars for their business DeBerti Designs in their new reality show "Twin Turbos," which premiered Feb. 28, 2018, on the Discovery Channel.